Welcome! Our goal at Winds of Change.NET is to give you one power-packed briefing of insights, news and trends from the global War on Terror that leaves you stimulated, informed, and occasionally amused every Thursday. Winds of War briefings are given by me, Colt, of Eurabian Times.
TOP TOPICS
- Osama Bin Laden is alive and talking. Who cares, you say? Where is he so we can kill his ass, you ask? U.S. forces believe he is still in the Afghan-Pakistan borderlands. The FBI has warned of the possibility that he might slip in to India. Al-Jazeera say they got the tape in Pakistan, but it could have been moved there easily enough.
- Bill Gertz says that U.S. intelligence have recieved satellite photos showing truck convoys at weapons sites in Iraq, just weeks before the U.S. invasion. According to one official, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, known as NGA, "documented the movement of long convoys of trucks from various areas around Baghdad to the Syrian border."
- The U.S. is warning of terrorist attacks in the Nordic and Baltic states.
- UPDATE: Yasser Arafat may be dead.
Other Topics Today Include: Iran Reports; Domestic Brief; hostages in Afghanistan; al-Qaeda didn't bomb Sinai; Kashmir jihad goes on; Bangladesh - new terror hub?; assassinations in Russia; Iraq jihadis threaten chemical attacks; Arafat in a coma; EU to send force to Gaza; Saudi al-Qaeda news.
IRAN REPORTS
- There is a major crackdown on dissidents in progress.
- November 2nd was the 25th anniversary of the beginning of the terrorist hostage-taking at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.
- The Iranian parliament has approved a bill endorsing the government decision to resume uranium enrichment. And they did it chanting Death to America.
- Iran will sign new contracts to sell gas to Europe and South Korea.
- Diplomats have hinted that the next IAEA report will undermine the American case that the mullahs are pursuing nuclear weapons.
- Jack Straw, British FM, says a U.S. attack on Iran is inconceivable. "I don't see any circumstances in which military action would be justified against Iran, full stop."
DOMESTIC SECURITY BRIEFINGS
- A Dutch film maker has been murdered in Amsterdam. Stabbed, shot and left with a message pinned to his chest with a knife, one witness said the jihadi tried to cut of his head. The attacker and 8 others have been arrested. The 8, all Arabs, had been held and released on suspicion of planning terrorist attacks.
- Illinois hospitals have been warned about Middle Eastern men pretending to be doctors and asking questions about the facilities. Hopefully nothin'.
- A plot to bomb the Real Madrid football/'soccer' stadium has been thwarted.
THE WIDER WAR
- Jaish-e Muslimeen have taken three U.N. workers hostage in Afghanistan. They're demanding that the infidels leave, or the hostages get killed. The Afghan government is negotiating for their release.
- The Egyptian government says al-Qaeda was not behind the Sinai attack. They blamed the "Israeli-Palestinian conflict", without naming a specific group.
- Islamist big cheese Hafiz Mohammad Saeed says the Kashmir jihad will continue whatever Musharraf does.
- Bangladesh as a new hub of terrorism?
- Two attacks on senior Russian officials: the first, a car bomb failed to kill a Dagestan-based official. In the second, the deputy commander of Russia's long-range air-force was shot and killed. I'm told that Dementyev was the real brains of the Russian air force.
- A committee comprising Ba'athists and Zarqawi jihadis has said they have possession of chemical weapons, and they'll use them.
- Yasser Arafat is in a coma. Debka reports that his immune system has collapsed.
- The E.U. is ready and willing to send a peace-keeping force to the Gaza Strip.
- Al-Qaeda's Saudi division has a new leader named Saud bin Hamoud al-Otaibi. Well, he's already short three terrorists and a weapons cache.
- This is both tasteless and addictive...
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"Bill Gertz says that U.S. intelligence have recieved satellite photos showing truck convoys at weapons sites in Iraq, just weeks before the U.S. invasion. "
So the USA failed in it's mission to 'secure WMDs in Iraq'. Nothing new there then.
Also more likely to be the personal effects of leading Baathists. You guys are like an alcolholic who won't admit you have a problem.
convoys of trucks moving toward the Syrian border: reported in DEKA files long ago. The MSM wants to believe that there were no stockpiles of WMD, so no resources were "wasted" on investigative reporting. Thus knowledge is sculpted by belief.
Perhaps we can look into it now.
Arafat is dead. I've sent you a trackback.
I know Ba'athists are nutty, but how likely are they to keep their gold-plated toilets and other garish trinkets in arms dumps where soldiers can steal them?
I may be an alcoholic, but I can stop drinking. There ain't no cure to stupid.
Colt, have you seen Spengler's version of what Osama was trying to tell us? What Osama Might Have Said
Spengler believes in Eurabia.
Osama has a new, post election tape out also. Can't wait to hear it.
And Theo Van Gogh was a linear descendent of Vincent. What a waste.
Thanks, jinni. I always forget to read Spengler.
U.S. issues terror warnings in Baltic and Nordic areas
By Katrin Bennhold International Herald Tribune
Tuesday, November 2, 2004
According to Jonathan Stevenson, a terrorism expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Washington, for the past year and a half Islamic groups like Al Qaeda have had their eye on Europe with its open borders, disparate security services and vulnerable train networks.
"The harder it has become to target the U.S., the more attractive a target Europe has become," Stevenson said. "And the alignment of the Baltic countries with U.S. policy in Iraq and their presumptive vulnerability makes them particularly attractive targets."
While a history of homegrown terrorism has made for an effective counterterrorism strategy in France and Britain, the smaller countries on Europe's northern fringe are potentially easier to hit, Stevenson said. And all three Baltic states - Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia - have been staunch supporters of the American-led invasion of Iraq last year. Together they have about 200 soldiers on the ground in Iraq.
Finland, like Norway and Sweden, opposed the Iraq war. Among the Scandinavian countries, only Denmark has troops in Iraq.
Inconceivable? I don't think that word means what Jack Straw thinks it means.
If this is accurate, I'm pretty impressed with the way the Bush administration handled it.
roublen vessau:
I've thought all along that October 2001 a back-channel message was sent re. both Afganistan and nukes: "Pervez, we're gonna make you an offer you can't refuse."
I'd be amazed if it hadn't.
roublen vessau:
I've thought all along that October 2001 a back-channel message was sent re. both Afganistan and nukes: "Pervez, we're gonna make you an offer you can't refuse."
I'd be amazed if it hadn't.
Don't know how I manged to double post that last. Oops.
On to Jack Straw.
The prospect of confrontation with Iran over nuclear weapons is well known to anybody who follows the inside page news. For instance, the subject came up in a post-election broadcast discussion involving Alistair Campbell (Blair's former head of communications, and still an unofficial advisor), and Ian Duncan-Smith (former Conservative Party leader).
So its certainly not inconceivable in the usual sense. But to a barrister/politician/diplomat like Straw, "I don't see any circumstances in which military action would be justified" the key word is probably see implying see right now. And inconceivable means inconceivable just now.
There are at least two things going on here:
1) The UK/France/Germany diplomatic approaches to Iran. Of which the UK element at least is likely co-ordinated with the US. Good cop/Bad cop.
2) Internal Labour Party and related UK politics; staving off the shrieks from the Labour left wing and BBC/Guardian/Independent elements of the media along the lines of "Bush won! Now the sky will fall!"
The implication message is, if the situation changes, the likely international reactions, and domestic political equations, would alter. Immediate leftist hysteria over, Iraq with elected government. It'll be interesting to see how the Conservatives move if it arises, i.e. will they get responsible.
Nuclear weapons acquisition would be one big change. Message to mullahs, summing US and Euro pronouncements: think about this; you don't have to go there, you don't want to go there, there's a way out, take it before it's too late.
OTOH, all indications seem to be that short of nukes, the US is unlikely to strike at Iraq in the near future.